President Obama did an enormous amount to muddy the waters by publicly informing us that “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

Thanks for the civics lesson, Prez! The problem is, no one disputes that right. That is, no one in this country disputes it — but don’t go trying to hold a Mass, build a church or temple, or sell a Bible in Saudi Arabia. Thinking of traveling to Mecca for your next vacation? If you’re not Muslim you can’t go there; it is against the law. It might indeed be interesting to have a discussion about rights in a country like Saudi Arabia or elsewhere in the Muslim world. For those of us fortunate enough to live in Western democracies, however, our lives are governed not only by formal rights but a tapestry of other considerations. As I note in The New Criterion, the fact that one has an abstract right to do something does not entail that one has license to do it regardless of other considerations. Rights are embedded in larger social imperatives that direct and qualify how they may be exercised. There are plenty of things you may have a right to do but that would be wrong to attempt. The philosopher John Searle touched on one aspect of this fact when he noted:

“From the proposition that one has a right to do something it does not follow that it is a right or even a morally permissible thing to do. Any healthy human institution—family, state, university, or ski team—grants its members rights that far exceed the bounds of morally acceptable behavior. There are many reasons for this. One is that the flexibility necessary for free, successful, and creative behavior requires a big gulf between what the institution grants by way of rights and what it has to expect if it is to succeed. The gulf between the rights granted and the performance expected is bridged by the responsibility of the members.”

Muslims have a right to build houses of worship in the United States. That does not mean that it is morally permissible for them to build one at Ground Zero. Think about building a shrine to Japanese militarism at Pearl Harbor. Or consider the proposal by Greg Gutfeld of Fox News. In order to foster “understanding and tolerance,” he has suggested building a gay bar catering to Islamic homosexuals right next to the Ground Zero mosque. A spokesman for the mosque project responded that “if you won’t consider the sensibilities of Muslims you’re not going to build dialogue.” Right. And how about considering the sensibilities of Americans who regard the building of an Islamic community center next to Ground Zero as a provocative slap in the face? How is that for building “dialogue”?

The bottom line is this: Islam is a proselytizing, intolerant religion. Its aim is to institute Sharia as the “sole reference point for . . . ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community . . . and state.” That is the end. The means are multifarious. Steering commercial aircraft into American skyscrapers is only one tactic. Using and abusing liberal democratic freedoms in order to promulgate an ideology that is neither liberal nor democratic is less ostentatious but may in the end be more effective precisely because it is less dramatic. This is the lasting significance of the case of the Ground Zero mosque. It represents another step on the march to Islamize the West. As Nancy Reagan put it, just say No.

108 Comments, 48 Threads

1.
john a.

Having a right and encouraging its excercise are two separate things. I’m sure the President understands that all Americans have a right to burn the flag. But would he hold a dinner and lecture us on how we must all acknowledge and respect such a right? Would he encourage its excercise by urging the offer of matches?Why not? Free expression is right up there with freedom of religion? Would he support the right to build an abortion clinic next to the local church or a liquor store next to the local school. All legitimate rights, we’re told, but all regularly and legitimately regulated by common sense, decency, law, or circumstance. Who says when rights need to be circumscribed? Often nobody, sometimes judges, maybe one in a while a president, most often the democracy itself, working through legislation, zoning laws, or, often, just community norms and common sense. Not everything is allowed at all times and everywhere, not even a right.

I’m waiting for the president to defend the right to bear arms everywhere and anywhere.

The construction of this Islamic community center is in no way equivalent to burning the US flag. It isn’t being constructed with any sort of malicious intent, nor should any be applied to it. As convenient as it may be for you to believe otherwise, the terrorists of 9/11 did not represent the whole of Islam. They were a violent radical minority. The vast majority of Muslims are normal, peaceful people.

thank you brian. for the bit of wisdom. I am sure you have studied the quran thouraly and understand exactly what they mean when they say kill the infidell, it is very refreshing to get a scholars view on islam,

Jihad (by any means, peaceful or otherwise) is duty of every muslim. If muslims do not do their duty they are not proper muslims. The mosque is built to advance jihad (there are no other reason to build mosque by definition). You make you own conclusion if it’s equivalent to burning flag or not.

Brian, There is no moderate Islam or not moderate one. Islam is just that – Islam.

Turkish PM said that. ALL the world knows that. You just making a PR statement, in hopes that people will believe in it.
There is no issue as to “Pray or not to Pray”! The question is WERE???!!! This site is a raw wound. This is the place where 3000 people have been MURDERED by followers of Islam. Great building have been brought down, AND, MUSLIM people were rejoicing in Brooklyn and around the world. On Conney Island ave they were passing sweets.

Either you are misinformed, Brian, or you are a liar. Respectfully, of course.

A mass murderer, a butcherer, a beheader, a torturer of helplessly bound prisoners.

An unapologetic serial child rapist. Who forced children to watch their parents torturous murders, before defiling and enslaving them.

A man of such an extreme and uncontrolled violence so evil, he condemnes the ENTIRE POPULATION of the world to perpetual war terror and violence, FOREVER, if all do not immediately submit to him.

Also remember folks, this is their version of him, proudly proclaimed in their holy books. There is no other legend of this guy but theirs. And it is by all accounts, a nasty evil tale of violence and hatred they make no apology for, one they are in fact proud of.

Brian, would you believe the “honesty” of a white supremist Nazi group? Being told its just a “Northern European cultural association”
That they only follow Hitlers “business and technology economic models” and are SOOOOOOOOO disappointed people would suspect they harbor any ill will, given that the majority of Nazis never actually killed anyone themselves….it was only a few extremist that gave a modern, noble, advanced civilization a bad name?

Or would you (rightly so) call “Bullshit”, and say they’re nothing but a front group for something evil and repugnant to all decent people, and have no place among civilized society.

I have been studying the tactics of Islam for a while. They have been attacking the U.S. since the late 1700′s. They are the reason our navy was formed. They supported Hitler in WWII. They have been on the war footing against us since our country was formed.

Let’s see now, since progressives like Brian would have us believe that there is a distinction between a real moderate Islam versus a supposedly illegitimate radical version of Islam, then here’s what Conservatives should likewise do…

As compared against the moderate main-stream Christianity of 99% of the world’s Christians, Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church espouses black liberation theology which is a hate-filled racist distortion of Christianity. Therefore Wright’s beliefs are not really Christianity, and therefore Obama who faithfully attended such an aberration for 20 years is NOT a Christian.

The first amendment right, that everyone has touted about this mosque has been misused in this instance. The first amendment says “Congress shall make no laws…” we, the people of NY and the United States aren’t aasking Congress to make any laws denying religious freedom, but we ask the state to do that. The state is no under the guidelines of the first amendment, they are not the United States Congress. The states have their own constitution that specifies what laws they can make about religion. So the state has the authority to deny allowing this mosque to be built. That being said, Islam encompasses much more than relirion, which makes it an ideology, it has religios, political, and financial undertones that does not grant it imunity from any laws because of religious freedoms. There are many muslims around the world that also agree that this mosque shouldn’t be built, that it would just be a victory shrine to the ‘extremists.

“President Obama did an enormous amount to muddy the waters by publicly informing us that “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

So we will now have no problem when the KKK wants to build a white aryan church next to rev wright’s favorite Black Liberation Church?

I doubt if most Americans have even a slight understanding of Islam. They view Islam as just another religion, such as Christianity or Judaism, with perhaps a few more “radicals” out there on the fringe. That concept is totally incorrect. Islam is not just a religion it is a way of life that is directed by leading religious figures, the Imams, who use the Koran to direct every single aspect of your personal, social, professional life as well as your economic activity, who you should love, who you should hate and even how to die. Islam is totally at odds with Western thought and civilization and the sooner the country wakes up to the fact that we are, actually, at war with Islam the sooner we will defeat our enemies.

Yes, of course we in the US (but not they, in their countries) have ‘freedom of religion’; but we don’t have ‘freedom of alternative legal systems that are diametrically opposed to the Constitution’ enshrined in our Constitution, do we?

Remember, it’s not a suicide pact! Also, we shouldn’t be hectored to ‘tolerate’ a system that is intolerant. There are already court cases in which Moslems are hiding behind religious/cultural practice to excuse heinous crimes, from marital rape and abuse to ‘honor’ killing.

The Ground Zero Mosque doesn’t have to answer for all the excesses of its co-religionists, of course. Maybe the founders/builders of same want to come out in opposition (expressed in Arabic as well, so we know they’re not pulling a taqiyyah on us) to crimes like honor killings, marital abuse, not to speak of jihad.

The transformation of Dubya from nazi criminal to one of those moderate republicans that liberals pine for happened a lot quicker than it did for Reagan. I wonder how long Mo Dowd is going to shelve the term ‘Bushworld’.

I believe it is safe to say that most American’s agree that Muslim’s can build mosques within proscribed zoning regulations and conduct their religion within the parameters of local, State and Federal laws. This is true for all mainstream religions. Nevertheless, the Cordoba House is a deliberate provocative act by the supporters and their failure to dialogue with local officials to negotiate an acceptable alternative speaks volumes.

Further, in our country when the religion crosses legal boundaries; polygamy as once practiced in the Mormon religion as one example, those religious practices must give way to acceptable legal principals. Don’t kid yourself for the next step will be the insistence by radical Muslims that some forms of Sharia be practiced in their communities and the Left will bend over backwards to comply in the name of tolerance. Any attempt to incorporate Sharia into local laws should be shot-down immediately.

The fact that the Left-Elite position is so out of touch with the general public it is simply breathtaking.

Promotion of Sharia Law is not a Religion, it is a political/military operation. We should start repeating that as often and as loud as possible. No foreign movement has a right to promote their political/military operations in the US and for any American to give credence to such foreign propaganda would, in current circumstances, be flirting with treason. It is easy to separate Sharia from religion. Just ask all Muslims who want to be Americans to take an oath rejecting Sharia and supporting our Anglo/Saxon legal heritage. Anyone who refuses should be unmasked and escorted out of the country as a potential terrorist. That’s separation of Church and State I can believe in.

Don’t forget that some Christian missionaries were stopped from handing out Bibles on streetcorners, on the grounds that they were disturbing the peace, in Dearborn, MI!!

The local population, heavily Moslem, may not like the handing out of Bibles.

But hey, what gives here? Handing out Bibles doesn’t kill people. It’s not like cutting off heads, or attacking women who aren’t sufficiently veiled, or throwing stones at adulterers… Besides, whose country is it? Did they come here? So how is it that we suddenly find ourselves waking up ‘there’, so to speak?

It really is long past time to say that, if you come here, you’re stuck with our lousy laws, customs, languages, cultural practices, such as they are.

If Bibles offend you–no one was threatening to kill you if you refused it, by the way–then please, stay away.

Exactly right. If I call prostitution my religion can I build a whorehouse anywhere I want? Religious freedom has nothing to do with this. Insulting the American way of life is all this mosque is about. ANYONE WHO SAYS DIFFERENT IS A LIAR OR A DHIMMY.

Why the hell should Bush, a private citizen, respond to anything and take the controversy off the back of the most incompetent president who ever lived?

Maureen Dowd and the leftists really believe their own propaganda that Bush is stupid, and the TOTUS’s mouth piece is smart. They believe a few words of praises would entice the stupid Bush to divert attentions from their smartest Dear Leader.

I spent a fascinating dinner party seated across from a surgeon from Cairo. He informed me about the open worship of religion in Egypt. Of course, Egypt is 97% Sunni Muslim and 3% Christian.

I asked the surgeon why there are no Shia Mosques in Cairo. Speaking (apparently) for Shia Muslims everywhere, he informed me that the Shia Muslims weren’t interested in having a Mosque in Cairo.

I nearly spit my soup onto the man’s shirt.

Let them build a mosque in downtown NY. BUT first, the nations of islam have to decide whether it will be a Sunni or Shiite house of worship. Mother Nature will have reclaimed lower Manhattan before that conflict is ever resolved.

The imam heading up the project is reportedly Sufi, a fairly “moderate”
strain of Islam, and one viewed as heterodox (and persecuted!) in some parts of the world by “majority” Moslems groups. I have not seen any media discussion of this affiliation but would like to learn more….

“My own view, which I’ve stated in this space before, is that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with ‘foundational Western values like free speech, the separation of church and state, and equality under the law. Such things are not simply missing from Islam: they are positively repudiated by Islam’.”

Couldn’t agree more. Furthermore, the good imam is cynically using our belief in freedom of religion against us.

This is the question: What does a country, founded in a belief in freedom of religion, do in the face of Islam, which does not believe in the freedom of religion. My own belief is that we must not tolerate those who do not believe in the freedom of religion, even if they publicly insist that do. What is the word for the moral acceptability of telling lies to the infidel?

When I accepted an invitation to a debate about “Islamofascism” at the University of Maine in Farmington (a commentary, as it turned out, there was no one there to debate), there was a crowd of students with I {heart] Islam T-shirts and suchlike regalia. I asked for a show of hand from people who had sponsored an Arab/Moslem immigrant, or sheltered a Moslem in their home, or dined in a Moslem home or invited a Moslem to dine in his or her home.

Oddly, enough my hand was the only one that went up.

So much for ritualized toleration. And I wondered if the lesbians in the crowd (well represented at UMF) believed that Islam [hearted] them. Should have asked.

I think people miss the point when they say its about Islam. It’s really about whether the builders of the “community center” are in doctrinal sympathy or collusion with those who carried out or approved of 9/11. If someone wanted to build a “German Cultural Center” in the general vicinity of the National Holocaust Museum, we wouldn’t think much about it but if we discovered it was being funded by a neo-Nazi group it would change everything.

The secrecy surrounding those who are fronting and funding the community center can only feed speculation that it is secretly intended as a gesture of contempt and domination.

I disagree. I would point out that Muslims aren’t always the violent exclusionist. In Kosovo, the Muslims were the tolerant and peaceful people whereas the culturally christian Serbs were the mass murderers. The major differences was the degrees of education, trade and experience with other cultures. At different points in history the tolerance of Muslims for non-Muslims exceeded the tolerance of Christians for non-Christians.

The major problem with Islam is that most of the Islamic world today is stuck in the Medieval ages. They have the same lack of separation between the secular and religious as did medieval Christianity. You will find parallels for every bad thing in modern day Islam in pre-Enlightement Christianity. Remember, it wasn’t until the 1600s that people began to speak of “Europe” instead of “Christendom” just like modern Muslims divide the world into dar-el-Islam and dar-el-Harb. Many Christian religious authorities claimed that Christians didn’t have to keep their word if given to non-Christians, that certain weapons and tactics could be used against non-Christians but not Christians, that Christians had a religious obligation to wage war against infidels etc. They even had religious figures serving as temporal leaders and raising armies. The brutality of the wars of Reformation alone should put paid to the idea that something innate in Christianity keeps Christians from committing atrocities in the name of God.

We can only imagine what Christianity would be like today if the early flowering of trade, science and exploration of early Islam had led the Islamic world to invent science and capitalism and leave “Christendom” in the dust the same way we did Islam. Would all the Christians still stuck in the medieval world view be as open, tolerant and peaceful as the more knowledgable Islamic world? I seriously doubt it.

I, for one, would not like to share planet with 15th Century Christianity.

The Western world had to claw it way up from the brutality, ignorance and dogmatism of medieval Christianity and we had centuries to do it in. The Islamic world had to accomplish the same transition in mere decades.

That is not to say we will not have destroy Muslims that can’t learn to adapt to the modern world. However, it does mean we can’t condemn an entire culture group as irredeemable an incapable of living in the modern world. If you say that the problem is Islam then we are left with conversion by the sword and mass murder as our only solutions.

I have had 2 conversations with terrorists online. I can assure you that their desire to kill us ALL has nothing to do with anything we have ever done to a Muslim or Mideastern nation. They were, however, both adamant about “nuking” us and soon.
Not all Muslims are terrorist, but so far, all the terrorists, are Muslims.

(do you really think that without the help of Muslims Northern Europe would have remained primitive??)

actually, it is the serbs who have always been tolerant. i suppose their moslem neighbors had a hard time with that, given their psycho cult following. and, do us a favor, we don’t need any more fake history.

History, compared to what is happening today, has nothing to do with it. There were periods in history when Muslims were very tolerant of other subjugated religions as long as taxes were payed. And yes, throughout much of recorded history, Christianity as practiced by Europeans was downright oppressive and brutal. But today will be history tomorrow and understanding the Imams will not change their way of thinking. They will still be insensitive to the infidel. Maybe in the near or far future things will change, bu today is today.

Luckily for us in the West, Christianity proved not wholly incompatible with the search for knowledge that led to the Renaissance and the recovery of Classical thought.

Thank you, DWEMs, for enlarging the body of knowledge by inventing modern science, risking your lives by exploring the world, etc.

Check some statistics (in Mark Steyn, I believe) for how many books from other languages ever get translated into Arabic. They have chosen their blinders, their ignorance. And I suppose Western science is really only worth acquiring in order to blow up Westerners with. Do you see them, even now, working all-out to ‘make the desert bloom,’ as it were? Or are their people still wallowing in dismal poverty and ignorance, despite the oil wealth?

I disagree. I would point out that Muslims aren’t always the violent exclusionist. In Kosovo, the Muslims were the tolerant and peaceful people whereas the culturally christian Serbs were the mass murderers. The major differences was the degrees of education, trade and experience with other cultures. At different points in history the tolerance of Muslims for non-Muslims exceeded the tolerance of Christians for non-Christians.

The major problem with Islam is that most of the Islamic world today is stuck in the Medieval ages. They have the same lack of separation between the secular and religious as did medieval Christianity. You will find parallels for every bad thing in modern day Islam in pre-Enlightement Christianity. Remember, it wasn’t until the 1600s that people began to speak of “Europe” instead of “Christendom” just like modern Muslims divide the world into dar-el-Islam and dar-el-Harb. Many Christian religious authorities claimed that Christians didn’t have to keep their word if given to non-Christians, that certain weapons and tactics could be used against non-Christians but not Christians, that Christians had a religious obligation to wage war against infidels etc. They even had religious figures serving as temporal leaders and raising armies. The brutality of the wars of Reformation alone should put paid to the idea that something innate in Christianity keeps Christians from committing atrocities in the name of God.

We can only imagine what Christianity would be like today if the early flowering of trade, science and exploration of early Islam had led the Islamic world to invent science and capitalism and leave “Christendom” in the dust the same way we did Islam. Would all the Christians still stuck in the medieval world view be as open, tolerant and peaceful as the more knowledgable Islamic world? I seriously doubt it.

I, for one, would not like to share planet with 15th Century Christianity.

The Western world had to claw it way up from the brutality, ignorance and dogmatism of medieval Christianity and we had centuries to do it in. The Islamic world had to accomplish the same transition in mere decades.

That is not to say we will not have destroy Muslims that can’t learn to adapt to the modern world. However, it does mean we can’t condemn an entire culture group as irredeemable and incapable of living in the modern world. We don’t want to contemplate the kind of actions that such a view of Islam would force on us.

Of course you disagree, silly person. But you’re wrong, and you’ll remain wrong, for the following reasons:
1. Conversion or subjugation of the whole world is commanded by the Qur’an;
2. It is an immutable doctrine of Islam that the Qur’an is the literal and inerrant Word of Allah Himself, given to Muhammad by the Angel Gibril, and never to be modified nor reinterpreted;
3. The Qur’an also enjoins the Muslim to regard Muhammad as the Perfect Man, and therefore to regard anything he says as a binding command.

Thus, the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the various ahadith explicitly contradict your well-wishing. The preachments of Islam’s highest clerics contradict you, as well. And the utter silence of the Muslim majority about Islam-powered terrorism, and the way Islam justifies it, contradicts you with a certain finality.

It’s not the soi-disant “peaceful” Muslim who’s most closely following the dictates of Islam; it’s his jihadist brother. Which is why, in a nutshell, the jihadists have succeeded in winning shelter and support, however reluctant, from the “peaceful” Muslim majority.

not only madison sq. garden, there were nazi bund rallies up in yorkville constantly (which at the time was all german), and hitler youth camps on long island. there was the virulent anti-semite and hitler lover, father coughlin on the radio.

this islamic crowd creeping out from the woodwork has been steamrolling our culture for several years, now. and allowed to get away with it. like the nazis,theylaugh at us, these greasy, oily pigs think we are weak and stupid for letting them do it. and our politicians keep on licking them.

hey, there’s plenty of precedent. chase bank had offices in berlin all during ww2. chase bank supported the nazis, while they wre an american bank, and our soldiers blood was on their hands as well as 6,000,000. the swiss melted down the gold extracted from the teeth of dead jews and hoarded it in swiss banks for the nazis.

we need to get ourselves together and fight back against the encroachment of this murderous, treacherous cult. no one else with other fish to fry is going to do it.

If GWB hadn’t taken care of Saddam, the chances of a post-atomic-cloud would have been twice as great. Now they want GWB to save the POTUS, by agreeing or saying something stupid. Keep quiet, George and have a good laugh.

Barbarians like myself really like appeasement. Like when me and the boys bring our horde to the gates of a city. It’s so helpful when the progressives bring us all the gold, oh yeah, best friends forever. It saves a lot of time hunting for it after we plunder and enslave them. They have their ways, we have ours. We always win. We’re barbarians.

Hudaibiya is a truce Mohammad made with a certain Jewish tribe of Banu Quraizah, wherein Mohammad ORDERED Muslims to LIE to the Jews and say they renounced Islam so they could infiltrate as spies, and setup an ambush to break the truce.

Actually, “Hudaibiyya” was a city in Arabia (near Makkah). It is not a “practice”. There was a “Treaty of Hudaibiyya” but it had nothing to do with the Jewish tribe of Banu Quraizah nor with “lying” to the infidels.

The treaty was signed between the Moslems travelling from the north (Medina) to (Makkah) and the “Quraish” tribe, the traditional keepers of the holy sites in Makkah who did not want the Moslems to enter Makkah. It is important in Islamic history as it foretold the eventual Islamization of Makkah and thereafter the entire Arabian peninsula.

The “Quraish” have no connection at all to the “Banu Quraizah”. They were totally separate entities.

(The Banu Quraizah are featured in the Battle of the Trench….but that’s another story).

Perhaps you were referring to ‘Taqiyya’ which is (technically) the practice of concealing your faith in dangerous circumstances (dissimulation) but is now used in a much wider sense, specifically the differences that appear when a speaker addresses an audience in Arabic and when he addresses an audience in another language purportedly on the same subject.

By the way, The Treaty of Hudaibiyya and The Battle of the Trench and so on are attested ONLY in “traditional” Islamic history.

Modern research casts doubt that any of this (and other incidents in early Islamic history) ever took place.

If you’re dealing with the Middle East, “anal” is the only way to go. You can try oral, of course, but you’ll be much less successful, at least so some of my friends tell me. Perhaps tho, you’re speaking from experience.

I believe both Quraish, or Qurayza (Arabic), tribes were quite related.

Mohammed, a nephew in the family of Quraish, attacked his own family. His uncle was the leader of the guardians of the Ka’aba shrine. Mohammed wanted to be boss.

Mohammed was probably a renegade Jewish criminal who pretended to find Jesus for a while before he began Arabizing Jewish and Christian stories in his recited poems.

After he fled to the medina, “Old City” of the Jews, he kept asking Jewish authorities for authorization of his new ‘gospel’, and to declare him a prophet. They said no- and he turned his prayers from Jerusalem to Mecca.

He was NOT MENTIONED by any letter writers for the first ‘official’ 160 years of Islam. Only al-Ilah (the God) is named on older mosques, such as the Blue mosque, and on coinage.

Hadith and Sunna were created and added to to fluff out his fictional biography.

The Koran was not written until 333 A.H., by Uvalve.

(There was no written Arabic- Syrian and Aramaic scribes were hired. Poems were recited and memorized- but think ‘Chinese telephone’. The Habiru (Hebrews) in Sinai invented the aleph-bet by simplifying 26 heiroglyphs and adding sounds to them. Jews invented writing; the Judeo-Christian culture is the world’s only culture based on a written history encyclopedia.)

The origin of Islam came centuries before Mohammed. In the 4th century, Rome could no longer pay it’s border garrisons. They turned to banditry and piracy- world trade stopped, and population crashed.

The Goths could read, and were eagerly adopting Roman culture. The Arabs could not. Their pirates stopped the papyrus trade from Egypt- no more cheap, durable communication- and began burning every library they could find. Probably didn’t want Goths who could read Roman and Jewish battle manuals (Old Testament) to have the advantage.

The Nejjd valley Bedouin Arab al-Ilah married ancient Babylonian moon goddess Sin, whose daughters were the stars. This fusion religion came about with increased trade for Meccan copper; it made Mecca an important crossroad.

The Romans preferred German mercenaries to Arab ones-
at least Germans didn’t drink their enemies’ blood!

Almost everything claimed by Islam is false.

There was no glorious conquest- they were camp whores and hired mercenaries who followed the Huns in 453, 710, and 1260. They stayed behind as overseers when the Huns left.

There were no universities. A few Greek books were kept by the Caliph of Cordoba until he and his city were destroyed by Mahgreb North Africans for not being Muslim enough. (912? AD)

Archaeology finds no Arab presence in Mesopotamian Babylon in the 10th century.

There was no Golden Age. The Abbassanids were Chaldean Assyrians. All of Islam’s ‘contributions’ were made by slaves, given Arab names. Dozens of local cultures were razed by these Borg.

“Heaven” were R and R camps where gangsters who fought for Islam could get all the little boy and girl sex slaves, and ‘rivers’ of wine, they wanted; benefits denied to civilian populations.

The second half of the Q’uran- the violent part, superior to the first- was claimed to be “lost”, and then “found” by the Umayyid rulers of Mecca after they killed Mohammed and retook their city under Mo’s best friend Baku’s rule. (He sold his daughter Ayisha to seal the deal. All deals must be ‘sealed in blood’- trade a daughter- paper means nothing.) Baku only lasted a year and a half. In 600 years, only two caliphs died natural deaths.

There was no ‘peaceful’ coexistence in India.
100 million Indians died under Islam. The country’s vast wealth went west.
The Bhuddist kingdoms of Pathan Bactria (Afghanistan) were eliminated- even their history.
125 million Africans are estimated to have died under Islamic slavery.

The fathers of the Spanish conquistadors lived under Islamic occupation in Grenada.
Islam’s heritage in Europe was the Inquisition (the search for secret Jews began 300 years before the Catholics picked it up for political reasons), illiteracy, and industrial slave trade. Witch-burning, at least, came from German pagans.

(As a very secular atheist, I am sick of Christians getting blamed for things they learned from foreign cultures- not from doctrine.
And OT Jews weren’t the only ones doing things- they just wrote somewhat honestly about their world. They did make war on peoples who insisted on continuing human sacrifice.)

Allah-u-akbhar means “Allah is Greatest” of all the gods, especially more than the Hebrew god.

In the Middle East, “Inshallah”- Allah wills it- means “I’m just making it up” or “I’m lying for now”- lying is perfectly acceptable to save face. It is expected and constant.

Islam- Lies, and a culture of constant lying. All made up, unlike the (misunderstood) historical events of the Habiru (Refugee of Ehdeen) Bible.

A fantasy past by fantasy ‘warriors’- whose war-fighting consists of terrorism, backstabbing, and betrayal- and of tricking others to do their frontline fighting for them. Cowards.

Gays must die, Maureen Dowd must cover herself with a burqa, male family members must “honor kill” their female relatives after raping them for the slutty females have committed adultery: having sex with someone they’re not married to.

” One side endeavors to defeat the enemies of freedom and tolerance. The other seeks to accommodate them, believing, McCarthy observes, that “they are moving us toward a better, smarter policy that will reduce the threat by making our enemies like us better.”

Mr. McCarthy should spend less time thinking wishfully and more time doing his homework. More than a year into the Presidents ” outreach to the muslim world ” the results are in. The big winner has been Iran while the big loser has been the USA.

What BHO and his mindless minions fail to grasp is that his accommodative attitude is considered a sign of weakness in the muslim world, a world that worships strength.
Additionally, and ironically, his abandonment of Israel has also weakened his image. He is widely seen as an unreliable ally. As one who would not share water in the desert.

The attempt to drag the former President into all this is less about the mosque and more about the vote. The Democrat party set a trap. I hope President Bush remembers the old saying . ” Silence is golden. “

I recently dined with a Muslim scholar who earnestly explained to me that in the mind of a Muslim there is no such thing as a “win-win” transaction or relationship. One is either the %&cker or the %&cked (his words). There is no in between.

Poor Maureen. She actually gave W some credit (aid to Africa, AIDs) in her pathetic little scibble. That must have really hurt. What next, a special appeal from Cindy Sheehan? How come no call for that great humanitarian, the Smiling Eunuch Jimma to pontificate? And where oh where is Bubba? Could it be that the Clintons know a terrific opportunity when they see one? BBC news on NPR, yesterday, casually referred to the GZM opposition as a right wing affair. That’s good news, I guess. Apparently 70% of the country have finally awakened and have joined the right wing.

A column (h/t, MEMRI) in the August 16, 2010 London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, director of Al-Arabiya TV and the paper’s former editor, “A House of Worship or a Symbol of Destruction?”

Al-Rashid also points out that no Muslims have been clamoring for a mosque in the Financial District—a place where people rarely go to worship (other than devout Capitalists, that is).

A mosque being built at Ground Zero because it’s Ground Zero. A mosque where the next terrorist planning to park a truck bomb at Times Square might stop to pray. A mosque built by an imam who wrote a book whose title was a call for the Islamization of the world “from the ashes of Ground Zero.”

In my opinion, the whole subtext of the mosque debate is political correctness. The majority of Americans (of course!) understand that Muslims have the right to build a mosque there but that that doesn’t make it the right thing to do. It is all about sensitivity. And this whole issue tears the face off political correctness, revealing that progressives only want sensitivity for SOME people. Mainstream Americans who work hard, pay their taxes and don’t ask for special treatment do not RECEIVE sensitivity, they only have to GIVE it. We are fed up with this! Whether mainstream Americans have articulated this to themselves or not, the “Jet Blue” moment generated by the mosque debate is “You can take political correctness and SHOVE IT!”

I don’t often do this – in fact I’m rather hesitant to do so but here goes – KUDOS to POTUS for unleashing this shit-storm of protest and bringing this issue to the forefront of the American collective conscience.

Note to Prez Bush: – Prez Obama has once again tripped on his dick – PLEASE PLEASE do not help this impostor out of this quandary. The guy is digging a hole – instead throw him a shovel. Or a backhoe.

These morons did NOTHING to help Bush out – calling him a nazi – a killer – stupid – and many other adjectives. Remain silent and let these morons twist in the winds of national polls that blow against them. They deserve nothing less.

Only someone endowed with the “progressive” mindset could spend eight years ringing every possible change in calling someone a muderer, Nazi, imbecile, puppet, rube, ignoramus and asshat and THEN solicit his help on a hot-button issue. Truly, this is arrogance on an Everest-like scale.

I strongly doubt if the former president will rise to the bait. I believe it would be exactly the wrong move and would not serve U.S. interests. However, if Mr. Bush decides to gratify this sudden longing for his support he will have demonstrated a quality of near-superhuman forgiveness not granted to most men.

There’s a delicious irony in this. After demonizing Bush and hearalding his stupidity for oh so long, the deseprate disciples of Obama are longing for Bush to say something nice, to bail this hapless president out of his predicament. We know members of the mainstream media are dishonest, but are they crazy, too? Why on earth would the vilified former president step forward to lend a hand to Obama, who blames all of his shortcomings on George Bush.his Yesterday, the Washington Post called for Bush to step forward and “provide some adult supervision” to his own party. Why? because then the media – and the current regime – could redouble efforts to blame him for even more. Let them stew in their own juices. Mr. Bush has been respectful and has stayed away from political discource since he left office. The Post had this to say: “It’s sign of respect for the office of the presidency to allow one’s successor to do his best without having to hear carping from his predecssor.” Would that Obama had half as much decency as George Bush. No, George. Don’t step forward and make yourself a bigger target. Let them figure it out.

Over at the White House, a funny thing is happening: they are losing a debate, and they don’t quite know what to do about it. Part of their problem is that they are attempting to frame the debate in a childish way, and the American People are framing it in an adult way. So they have no hope of winning unless they can get the rest of us to accept their definition of the issues…and they have a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding in that.

So think: this happens all of the time when you have two seven year old boys in the back of the car. They lose the argument with their mom, time to appeal to dad and to get the two of them fighting. Dad will make mom see the light, or at least confuse the issue so they don’t feel like they’re losing. They are looking for an adult, but they cannot find one in their party. Hence GWB. There is a tacit admission that there are no Dem adults in sight anywhere, including The One. So Bush is supposed to make us all shut up. Good luck.

According to Roger Kimball, nobody has disputed the right to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. Apparently, in Roger Kimball’s universe, you have a “right” when you have to ask a committee for permission to exercise it–a “right” whose exercise is subject to a vote, is susceptible of public influence, and can be refused. And apparently Newt Gingrich is nobody: asked about the “Ground Zero controversy,” Gingrich responded that Nazis do not have the RIGHT to put a sign up next to the Holocaust Museum, obviously implying, by analogy, that Muslims lack a right to build a mosque near Ground Zero. I have to hand one thing to Roger Kimball–he’s the only author on earth who can induce sympathy in me for Maureen Dowd. Even Dowd doesn’t deserve a critic like him.

the pope asked nuns not to build their convent near auswitch,
the historical society asked disney not to build a park near gettysburg.
its a respect thing.
the kkk is a legal entity, what if they put an office near a certain high school in selma? respect for people and history is more important than politics or religion,
there are hundreds of mosques in NYC, putting one at WTC is already being called the victory mosque by many on both sides of the issue, nothing good can come out of it at this point.

re: “My own view, which I’ve stated in this space before, is that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with ‘foundational Western values like free speech, the separation of church and state, and equality under the law. Such things are not simply missing from Islam: they are positively repudiated by Islam.’”

Roger, weren’t similar things once said of Catholics? (how easily we forget.)

in the past it has been said that the Germans can’t ‘do’ democracy, the Japanese can’t do democracy, Latin Americans can’t do democracy, non-Japanese East Asians can’t do democracy — and yet all of these groups now have prominent democracies.

Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox Christians have been doing democracy, so have Jews, and Buddhists, and Hindus, and Shintos, and Taoists, among others. i am skeptical of the assertion that Muslims are inherently incapable of self-governance.

Of course they’re not inherently incapable of democracy and other modern mind-sets. However, they do have to be ready to leave belief in Islam (to the extent that it requires sharia and all the rest of the cultural baggage) behind, first.

It’s not fair to look at Islam the way we look at a ‘religion’, since the religions most of us are familiar with (Judaism, Christianity, speaking for myself) don’t also necessarily include a legal/political code that can’t be severed from the religious beliefs.

The stoning and jihadi martyrdom and all that execrable stuff is actually part of the ‘religion,’ and we simply can’t tolerate that. It would be like tolerating Nazis, or Aztecs and their human sacrifices.

If ‘Muslim extremists’ is such a rarity, why has this *hit gone on from its inception?

As well as being more widespread, frequent in this day and age?

IMO, that’s DEVOLVING. Though Muslim extremists are ‘evolving’ so to speak. Relying (and being pleasantly rewarded might I add) by the dhimmitude-like actions of the very ‘leaders’ SWORN to protect its constituents from foreign invaders. Oh, that’s right. Progressive’s allegiance to the U.S. Constitution is so 19th Century..

the left wants the blame GWB shield, because they are taking to many hits. he hasn’t said anything in 18 months, why should he say anything now. i thought W was doing something for Haiti at the moment.

My name is Charles B. and my story must be told. I was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1933. We lived under very comfortable circumstances, enjoying a privileged existence. Our family, both immediate and extended was affluent- my father was an oil broker for the Shell Corporation- and we lacked nothing in the way of material possesions.

In 1939 the second world war broke out, France was defeated and occupied by the Nazi forces. The Vichy regime was established and collaborated fully with the Nazis. In 1940 the Jews of France were rounded up and deported to the death camps where the majority perished.

During the same period Morocco was controlled by the pro-Nazi Vichyites, but the day to day administrative duties were carried out by the Muslim Arab authorites.

A decree was issued by the Vichy regime that all Jews were to be registered and issued the yellow star of David tags as a prelude to being rounded up and confined to the concentration camps that were being constructed in the North- East region.

the Nazi-controlled Vichy government issued antisemitic orders excluding Jews from public functions. Sultan Mohammed V refused to apply these racist laws and, as a sign of defiance, insisted on inviting all the rabbis of Morocco to the 1941 throne celebrations

In addition, King Mohammed V balked at the registration order, he stated ” we don’t have Jews here only Moroccon citizens with Jewish affiliation.” This move meant that the Jews of Morocco were saved from the terrible fate that befell their brethren in the Christian part of the world.

Close to 400, 000 Jews were saved. And that formed the bulk of the Sephardim population that later emigrated to Israel.

This is information that for subsequent political purposes remains suppressed and is largely unknown by most Jews and the world at large.

The reason a ragtag, bloodthirsty bunch of barbarians – radical islamists – offer an existential threat to the most powerful nations of the world is our absurd disunity.

That is, a substantial number of people in the prosperous, powerful west stubbornly refuses to condemn these people for the no-account grubs that they are, and worse, encourages and fawns on them, while apologizing for imaginary slights offered to them.

Standing up to islamists is just a matter of commonsense, because these cutthroats having nothing to offer except the ignorance and barbarity of the dark ages. Nothing else. So Seeing off radical Islam should not be hard. In fact it should be dead easy.

But we have one hand tied behind our back. While a significant part of the response is fear, malevolent contrariness or appeasement, the rest of us fight ineffectively, and the collective response of the most powerful nations of the earth is a kind of feeble panic.

Bush= Hitler? As always, libtardism’s hysteria results in absurd pronouncements,almost as bad as the Bush idiot’s “Islam is peace” imbecility. For the record Bush IS NOT Hitler;he’s Vicente Fox’s PEON!BTW: He’s probably waiting for the right moment to come out in support of the mosque.Globalism will never triumph in the USA, until middle class euro-americans are crushed by elite-empowered immigrant minorities whose interests coincide with those of the globalist plutocracy whose puppet was George (PEON) Bush.